It’s clear that casual fans drive attendance figures. Diehard fans are going to games regardless. The casual fans are the ones that need convincing.

I argue that it is not the Casual fan who drives baseball attendance in Cleveland, but the diehard who is willing to fork over a large capital investment for season tickets.

The MLB Avg for season ticket holders per team is around 15,000, and the Indians currently have lower then 6,000, during the hey day in the 90s they had around 22,000. So every single night the Tribe has a 9,000 seat disadvantage from the average MLB teams attendance, that would be tough for any team to make up in Causal/walkup fans on a nightly basis.

If the Tribe ever wants to be anything less then the bottom of the barrel in attendance they are going to need to be able to show the diehard's, not the casual fan that they can string together a few successful seasons, and warrant forking over a large sum of money for season tickets. The team has some work ahead of it , when you have an ownership group who has a history of crying poor, trading back to back Cy-Young winners, and tells its fans it can only compete every 5 years, its tough to get even the diehards to want to commit.

(my number for avg. MLB season ticket holders comes from a WSJ article from '09, couldn't find anything more current but I wouldn't be surprised if its higher today)

"I don't think they're building chemical weapons in Berea. But they might be. I can't say for sure."Chuck Klosterman

Casual fans drive attendance. People who go from going to <5 games per year to suddenly going to 10, 15, or even 20. When you start getting those people, you start increasing your attendance. There's a much larger contingent of casual fans than diehard fans. And I don't think it's fair to equate "diehard" with "season ticket holder".

The ownership excuse is no longer plausible. Unless you're a fucking moron, you know why they traded CC Sabathia and Cliff Lee. Payroll for this season is over 80M, it will be the same again next year and for the foreseeable future. That's more than enough to be competitive. The sale of Sportstime Ohio coupled with MLB's new TV revenue deal gave the Dolans significantly more financial leeway. I also believe the transition from Larry Dolan to Paul Dolan signified a change. Paul's more in touch with what needs to be done and isn't as set in his ways as old man Larry was.

Season ticket holders are important and the Indians are unquestionably behind the rest of the league in that regard. But, diehards are going to their fair share of games no matter what, regardless of if they're buying single game tickets or season packages. The casual fans, the ones with disposable income, are what drive attendance. You get them on board and they may become season ticket holders in the future or you'll at least consistently get them into the ballpark 10-15 times a season.

A lack of corporate investment in suites, loges, and field box/club level season tickets hurts more than some Tom, Dick, or Harry buying a half season package. Not from an attendance standpoint, necessarily, but from a revenue standpoint.

If you look at attendance spikes from giveaways, fireworks, Dollar Dog Nights, or opponents, those are all about casual fans. I understand it's natural for attendance to rise when people don't have work the next day or have to get the kids to school in the morning, but we're talking about big spikes, and diehards aren't the reason why.

Casual fans go when the going is good. Diehards are the reason attendance isn't lower than it already is.

A God Damn dead man would understand that if a minor league bus in any city took a real sharp right turn, a Zack McCalister would likely fall out. - Lead Pipe

I agree with you that the ownership excuse no longer holds water , but that is not the perception among the so called "casual fans" , and at this point I'm not so sure that that the casual fans will show up when "the going is good ", the going is good right now, where are they? All season I been hearing " they will show up when schools over " & " they will show up if they don't collapse" . Well schools over, and the collapse isn't happening (yet), so where is everyone? I stand by my statement , attendance will remain at the bottom of the barrel until they can show a sustained year to year success , and get the season tickets back up.

The math is simple they have less then 6000 season tickets, that means any given night they are getting around 14,000 single game ticket buyers. If they just had the league avg. of 15000 season ticket holders we are talking about 30,000 fans a night, and no one is talking about attendance figures.

"I don't think they're building chemical weapons in Berea. But they might be. I can't say for sure."Chuck Klosterman